But of course nothing is ever simple when bringing together national statistics. Countries have different definitions of murder and the data is collected at different times and using different methods. All of this makes comparison of murder rates a messy business.

But we can draw out important trends. We have taken a table of murder rates the UNODC have collected, and mapped them here:

We have the full map for you to explore more easily. You can also see the dates and source of the stats for each country in the table below and when you click on a country in the map.

What does a high murder rate tell us about the country? The UNODC boldly state the cyclic relationship between crime and economic conditions:

there is a clear link between violent crime and development: crime hampers poor human and economic development; this, in turn, fosters crime. Improvements to social and economic conditions go hand in hand with the reduction of violent crime.

If this is the case then Honduras needs social and economic interventions fast, as does El Salvador and Cote d'Ivoire.

If we take some economic measures such as gdp per capita from the CIA factbook we can see a general trend that those lower in the ranking are those with higher murder rates.

Section 2 of the UNODC report looks in more detail at these trends, relating murder rates to inequality in society and other economic indicators.

Here is the UNODC murder rate data in a usable format for you to explore. Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Data summary

Murder through the world from the UNODC - Homicide rate per 100,000 population